


One way to beat the shrink

by Kleine_kat



Category: The Blacklist (TV)
Genre: Dembe really packs a punch, Gen, Masochistic tendencies, Post Office Personnel aren't the happiest of people, Ressler really isn't doing so well, working through things
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-09-28
Updated: 2014-09-28
Packaged: 2018-02-19 03:34:20
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,610
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2373008
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Kleine_kat/pseuds/Kleine_kat
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Berlin is back, and the Task Force is interrupted in the middle of licking their psychological wounds. Dembe lends a hand licking Ressler's...by beating the shit out of him. As requested.</p>
            </blockquote>





	One way to beat the shrink

**Author's Note:**

> Ok, I don’t know what the hell this is; I just typed it up this afternoon. It’s not part of the Rinse and Repeat ‘verse. Maybe a separate second season ‘verse? Or maybe it’s just a one-off, I don’t know yet.
> 
> Suffice to say that the first ep of the second season made me giddily happy. I’m really far too invested in this silly show :) But hey, there was a lot of Ressler, and more importantly, a lot of hints that Ressler isn’t doing so well in the mental health department. The sight of him popping pills with his shirt off and a big scar on his shoulder made me hide a delighted squee from my BF. And he talked to Lizzie! They had almost a whole minute of character-building conversation! And Lizzie was…cool, and seemed to have a bit more of a personality. I’m so pleased!  
> I’m feeling positive for a whole lot more of Ressler-suffers-like-a-pro-ness this season.
> 
> Until I’ve figured out a bigger plot, here’s something short. Sorry Ressler, but I just keep turning you into a masochist. I can’t seem to help myself.

“If you see Dembe,” Red had told her, just before leaving the Post Office after the latest briefing on the case, “please tell him to pick me up at Flavian’s at eleven.”

“Isn’t he taking you there?” Liz had asked. Red rarely went anywhere without his trusty bodyguard, especially since Berlin had reared his ugly head again.

Red had shrugged. “I believe he’s involved himself in some sort of cleansing ritual. Don’t worry, Lizzie; I’ll be quite alright.”

He had left, and while Liz had kept her eyes open, she hadn’t seen Dembe, and she had almost forgot all about Red’s little request when she sudden realised that a. it was almost seven-thirty and most of the office was empty; b. she was missing a file and she knew Ressler had had it last; c. she hadn’t seen Ressler since six; and d. Dembe was still absent, and yet he was apparently here at the Post Office.

Sauntering out of her office and running her fingers through her hair, relishing the blunt feel of the freshly-cut strands against her fingers, she sought out anyone who might tell her where she could find her partner, and noticed Dr Friedman coming out of her office, looking tired, harassed and despondent. Lizzie felt for her. Some people were like Ressler, constantly brushing her off and belittling her, and they must be incredibly annoying. Worse were those who actually did want to talk and had a sudden psychological breakdown right in front of her, which may or may not result in hysterical crying, paranoid panic, catatonia or other unpleasantness. Seeing your colleagues shot down like mad dogs could cause that kind of thing. As could failing to staunch the flow of blood of your partner’s cut throat. Or shooting your not-quite husband four times in the chest. Liz had done her share of crying in front of Friedman. “It’s only natural, Liz,” the good doctor had assured her, as she handed her tissue after tissue. “You’ve been through so much, and processing all of this…it’ll take time. Don’t hide it away. Accept it. Work through it. In the end, you’ll come out stronger.”

And as a matter of fact, she had.

“Dr Friedman?”

The doctor looked up from her key, locked the door and tucked the key away in her pocket. “Yes?”

“Have you seen Ressler?”

The woman gave a mocking chuckle. “Me? You’re asking _me_?”

Liz’ mouth twitched. “Still hunting for him, are you?”

“Giving me a short monologue about how he’s fine before fleeing my presence doesn’t count as a psych review,” Friedman said. “But, now you’re asking, the last time I saw his back it was going down to the gym, so maybe he’s still there.”

Lizzie gave her a nod in thanks, glanced at the elevator and took the stairs down to the gym. She rarely came here, preferring the gym she’d attended since she’d moved to DC to the sterile space the FBI had installed here.

Halfway down the stairs, she heard the muted thuds of gloved hands smacking against flesh. Flesh, not a punching bag; she could make out the difference. The further down she got, the louder the beats became, until they made her wince as she imagined her own flesh taking that kind of abuse.

Ressler apparently visited this place more frequently than she. He and Dembe. They were both here, and they were the only ones, and they were going at it in the boxing ring in a way that had very little to do with boxing and quite a lot with beating the living hell out of each other.

Liz froze in the shadow of the staircase, watching them and suddenly wondering whether she should run back upstairs, stop Dr Friedman from leaving and drag her down here to show her how Ressler was really doing.

For some reason, she didn’t think he was doing quite as well as he said he was doing.

He and Dembe were both wearing gloves and mouthguards, but that was all that showed that this was, in fact, a bout of friendly sparring. Neither of them was wearing a shirt, and while all she could see of Dembe was his branded back, she could see Ressler’s bare upper body, and it was mottled with red bruises and smears of blood. So was his face. And so was the mat.

And even as she was standing there, they nodded at each other again and jumped at one another, and no, this wasn’t boxing, this was freefighting, everything allowed including—she winced in sympathy—knees to the groin and direct punches in the face. Dembe fought like a tiger, every move collected and powerful; he coiled in place until he saw his chance and then lashed out with arms like pistons. Ressler just threw himself at him and pummelled him until he was physically beaten back. And he took the beating with an endurance that was nothing short of insane. And kept dishing it out brutally, but he received far more blows than he handed out.

He did not fight this way normally, Liz knew, from experience. He couldn’t. If he left himself open like this during a serious melee battle, he’d be defeated almost instantly. What the hell was he doing? What the hell were they _both_ doing? She slowly made her way to the ring, drawn towards the destructive energy they were projecting. Neither of them seemed to notice her; they were completely focused upon one another.

As she came closer and she could see the both of them, she started a little. Dembe’s dark face was bloodied around the mouth, and one of his eyes was swelling shut, but she could see no other injuries. And that was no surprise, as he kept up a strong defence and Ressler…didn’t. As she was watching, Dembe landed a massive blow on his opponent’s midriff, causing Ressler to bend double like a switchblade—and the immediate reaction should have been to bring up his arms to protect his skull. But Ressler’s arms did not come up, and Dembe’s gloved fist crashed into the side of his head, driving him to the ground. He hit the mat like a ton of bricks, bloody saliva splattering from his mouth.

“Had enough?” Dembe asked, words muddled by the piece in his mouth.

Ressler scrambled to his knees, shaking his head like a felled ox. “No,” he gasped, and wiped at his chin. He held out his hand, and Dembe clasped his wrist and pulled him to his feet.

“You sure? I hit you pretty hard.”

“I’m good.” He raised his arms in a standard defensive position—and it was total bullshit, Lizzie thought. He wasn’t good; it was awful. He should be ashamed of himself.

The next exchange of punches was decent enough; he kept up his defence and took special care to protect his face, probably because he was still reeling from that last hit. But after a while, he regained his equilibrium, and as he did, his defence turned from loose into sloppy into simply not there at all, and the second time Dembe broke through and gave him an uppercut straight on the chin, it flung him backwards into the ropes and made him crash to the mat like a rag doll.

Lizzie averted her face.

This wasn’t a friendly bout.

This was masochism.

The only difference was that Dembe was not a sadist. He kept standing there, breathing hard, looking down on the man he’d brought down and who, after a couple of seconds of motionlessness, stirred and weakly attempted to push himself up.

_Christ. He was out. He was actually out for the count._

“Had enough?” he asked, and Liz got the impression that he had been asking this question for quite some time now, and dearly hoped he would get an affirming answer anytime soon.

“No,” Ressler slurred around his mouthpiece. He was trying to get his arms underneath him, but every time he tried to get up, his elbows collapsed and he went down again.

Dembe watched him flop about for a few more seconds, making no move to help him. Then he spit out his mouthguard into his glove. He squatted down next to Ressler, who was still stubbornly trying to sit up on his knees.

“We had a deal. As long as you can get up on your own, we continue. The moment you can’t, we stop. It seems to me you’ve had enough punishment.”

Ressler’s gloved hands closed around the rope above his head. “I can go on.”

 _No,_ Lizzie thought, stomach clenching. _No, you can’t. Dembe, he can’t._

Dembe, however, shrugged. “Yes? Then get up.” He sat very still while Ressler painfully, haltingly dragged himself to his feet and sagged against the ropes, panting. His head hung down, mouth open, threads of bloody drool dripping onto his chest. Dembe shook his head, but he unfolded from his crouch and rolled his shoulders. He did not, however, put his bit back in.

“Go on,” Ressler mumbled, raising his head. “Come at me.”

“Not while you’re touching the ropes,” Dembe said flatly.

Ressler scowled. He took a deep breath, flinching as he did so, hand shooting to his ribs in reaction, before pushing himself free of the ropes. He swayed where he was standing, head bowed. “Come at me.”

“Raise your arms,” Dembe commanded. He took a defensive position himself. “I won’t fight you until you raise your arms.”

Ressler’s arms quivered. A bruise the size of his palm was steadily going darker on his left bicep. He couldn’t lift his fists higher than his chest. “Come on!” he cried, a hint of desperation in his voice.

“Higher,” Dembe said relentlessly. Ressler’s fists jerked up, waving and trembling. “Higher! I won’t fight you until you at least appear as if you’re serious. Now raise your fists!”

“I don’t want you to fight me!” Ressler screamed. And suddenly he seemed to find some hidden cache of strength within him, for he launched himself at Dembe in another one of those all-out attacks, and Lizzie stared at the two of them, her mouth open, because she didn’t think she’d ever seen self-flagellation by proxy before. Ressler’s fists thudded into Dembe’s lower arms, into his stomach, into the gloves held up protectively in front of his face—and then, just as Dembe saw an opening and drew back one elbow, on that split second that Ressler saw he was open and could slam down his defences or dance out of range…he just didn’t and dropped his arms completely.

Dembe’s right hook slammed into Ressler’s temple, the punch so brutal it dislodged the mouthguard from his teeth and sent it spinning into the room. Ressler went down as well, hitting the ground so hard the moisture on the mat jumped up in a spray of drops before it settled down again.

“Ressler!” Liz didn’t know who of the two of them cried out his name, but when she slithered into the ring beneath the ropes, Dembe was already kneeling next to his opponent’s prone form and gently rolled him onto his back. He did not seem surprised at Lizzie’s presence as she dropped down next to him.

“He’s alright,” he said, and pulled at the laces of his glove with his teeth.

“Alright?” Lizzie spat incredulously. “He’s _unconscious_! Ressler. Ressler! Jesus Christ, did you really have to hit him that hard?”

Dembe shrugged. “He was giving it his all. It’d be an insult to do anything less.” He pulled off the glove with his teeth, stretched his fingers and pressed two of them into Ressler’s neck. Gave a satisfied grunt and began to untie the other glove.

Lizzie glowered at him. “That’s bullshit.” Dembe raised an eyebrow. A thin sheen of sweat covered his entire smooth, dark head; he looked like a chocolate éclair fresh out of the fridge. “He wasn’t even trying and you know it. Is this the ‘cleansing ritual’ Red was talking about? You beating the shit out of Ressler?”

Dembe gingerly probed at his eye. “I wasn’t the only one doing the beating. And it’s what he wanted.” He leaned forward and slapped Ressler’s cheek before she could stop him. “Come on, champ. Up and at ‘em.”

“Stop that!” Lizzie snapped, but Ressler moaned, and jerked, and opened dazed eyes, and slurred, “Ok. Now I’ve had enough.”

And then Lizzie slapped him as well.

“Red wanted me to remind you that you need to pick him up at Flavian’s at eleven,” she snarled at Dembe.

“Right,” Red’s body guard said. He held out his hand to Ressler and pulled him up so he could lean against the ropes, but Liz stopped him from tottering off to the showers by placing a hand on his bloody chest.

“We’re not finished yet,” she said ominously.

*

Later, they were sitting in a coffee shop at a walking distance from the Post Office.

Ressler had showered, and he had cleaned up unbelievingly well. The bruises on his chest and arms were covered neatly by his shirt and jacket, his fingers were whole, and only his puffy lower lip and a scrape on top of a red bruise on the left side of his face betrayed he hadn’t spent the evening watching TV. Well, Lizzie thought, that and the fact that he couldn’t seem to focus all that well.

She watched him sip coffee and try to ignore she was sitting across from him, and shook her head.

“So how long has this been going on?”

Ressler briefly looked up from his coffee, seemed displeased to find she had not gone up in smoke and looked away from her again. “Tonight? From about six.”

“Ah. So you’ve been pounding at one another for about ninety minutes. That’s great.” She narrowed her eyes. “Wait. Tonight? So you’ve done this more often?” Ressler cracked his neck, unwilling to speak. Lizzie’s frown grew deeper. “Unless you talk to me, I’ll report this to Dr Friedman and you REALLY don’t want me to do that, do you?”

“No.”

“I thought not. How the hell are you going to hide those bruises, anyway?”

His fingers traced the marks on his lip and cheek. “Not, I guess. He never targeted my face before; I guess he must be getting tired of…of this.”

Liz inhaled deeply. This. How often had they done ‘this’ for someone to become tired of it?

“What, exactly, is ‘this’, Don?”

He looked up, eyes steady. “I’d think that was pretty clear. ‘This’ is him and me sparring with one another.”

“Uhuh. With you trusting the angels for defence and him trying to K.O. you until you don’t get up anymore.” She leaned forward. “What the hell is wrong with taking your appointment with Dr Friedman? Why on earth would you prefer getting beaten senseless to talking with a nice lady about what happened to you? I’ve done it! It’s no big deal, really!”

“I can hardly go about planting my fist into Dr Friedman’s face, can I?” Ressler asked. She gaped at him. He stirred his coffee. “I don’t want to talk about what’s happened to me,” he continued quietly. “It’s none of her business what’s happened to me and how I’m dealing with it.”

“She’s our resident FBI shrink,” Lizzie hissed. “I’d say if it’s anyone’s business, it’s hers. Psych reports and all that, remember?” _And mister, is yours going to have a great big fat red FAIL stamp on top of it if you don’t get this shit under control._ “She’s hounding your ass already because you keep dodging her; what do you think she’ll do when she finds out you’re letting yourself get beaten to a pulp on a what? semi-regular basis?”

Ressler shrugged, unfazed. Liz, however, was truly upset by this ugly little revelation. She’d been convinced that he was doing…if not exactly alright, then at least tolerably well. He seemed calm and collected enough, at work. Better than the first couple of weeks after Meera’s death and Cooper’s stay in the ICU. He hadn’t been sleeping then, and they’d spent too many hours sitting in various coffee shops, either talking about nothing or not talking at all until the sun came up. Liz still had trouble closing her eyes at night, but she hadn’t met him in coffee shops anymore, and so she thought he’d been doing better.

This suggested otherwise.

She sighed. “So. You let Dembe punish you.”

“It’s not like that.”

“Yes,” she maintained, “it is. I saw you; I know the way you fight when it matters, and this was not it. You were consciously taking hits until he knocked you out. For curiosity’s sake: how often did he beat you to the ground? How often did you get up?”

He looked away. “I don’t know. Four, five times?”

“Jesus, Don.”

“Hey, I didn’t ask you to come down and judge me. What were you doing there, anyway? Shouldn’t you be moving hotel rooms, or something?”

“I was there, because you’d mislaid a file and I couldn’t find it.”

“What file?”

“Caroline Butter’s background.”

“I put it back in the case folder.”

“No, you didn’t. I looked; it wasn’t there.”

“Then you must’ve missed it, because I definitely put it back in there.”

“Whatever.” It wasn’t as if she cared about the stupid file. It kind of lost its significance after she’d seen those gloves pound into her partner as if he were a masochistic steak. She drank her own coffee. Finally, she looked at him until he met her eyes. “Does it help?”

“Does what help?”

“The pain. Does it help you cope?”

A tiny smirk pulled up the corners of his mouth. “It makes me feel _pain_ ,” he replied, as if that should clarify things. It didn’t, for her.

“So you like pain?”

“No. But I prefer it over…other things.”

“What other things?”

He hesitated, then whispered, “Things that actually _hurt_.”

“That doesn’t make any sense.”

“I didn’t expect it to. Not to you.”

“What do you mean with that?”

“Nothing. Just…you’re different than me. You deal with things differently. This is the way I deal with…with everything, really.” He sat up, face anxious as he said, “You aren’t really going to report me to Friedman, are you? Because you wouldn’t be helping me. I have to deal with this in my own way; talking to some woman who doesn’t have the faintest idea what’s going on in my head won’t work.”

“Maybe if you let her know what’s going on in your head…”

“No.” She sighed and shook her head. “Keen…”

“Fine, I won’t snitch on you. But you’ll still have to explain those bruises on your face.”

“Aggressive door,” Ressler deadpanned, and she laughed despite everything.

They ordered more coffee, and blueberry pie. Liz was just scraping the final bits of jelly from her plate when something occurred to her, prompting her to ask, “Why Dembe?”

“Mm?”

“Why’d you ask Dembe to…”

“Beat me up in fair battle?”

“Yes.”

He shrugged. “Because it was either him or Reddington. I couldn’t do this with anyone from the office. I mean, I asked you, and you wouldn’t.”

A jolt went through Liz’s stomach, because holy god, he had, hadn’t he? That innocent ‘Want to have a little sparring match?’ from a couple of weeks ago…that would have led to…‘this’?

“You’d have let me beat you?” She wasn’t sure what to think about that.

“If I could’ve done it without you noticing,” he nodded. “Yes. But I would have preferred Reddington. No offence, but you’re simply not as strong as I am, and I doubt you’d have failed to see me dropping my defence to give you a decent shot.” His eyes unfocused again. “And I’d have loved to get a shot at Reddington.” He smiled, a quick, sharp flash of teeth. “I’m sure he was aware of that. That’s why it had to be Dembe.”

“Red was aware of this,” Lizzie understood.

“If Dembe told him, then yes.”

She regarded him over the rim of her second cup. “You’re not convinced he told Red.”

“No.” He rubbed at his cheek and hissed, pulled his hand away. “Maybe he did. Maybe he didn’t. It wasn’t as if I went up to Red and asked him to kick the snot out of me because I was feeling masochistic that fine evening. All I know is that I asked Dembe if he’d fight me until I went down and couldn’t come up again. If he was ok with that. And he said yes. I can’t imagine he’d do that if he didn’t want to. Or, for that matter, Red ordering him to beat the crap out of me because he feels like he owes me. Hell, I don’t know, maybe it’s as therapeutic for him as it is for me. Maybe he’s been dying to hit me; he’s certainly showed no reservations about doing so.”

“So you’ll keep doing this?” Liz asked. Even though they were covered now, she could still see those marks on his chest and abdomen; could still remember the way he invited that last hit. It made her feel a little nauseous.

Ressler lifted his shoulders. “Maybe. If I feel like I need it, if things go spinning out of control again. If Dembe’s around. Maybe I won’t need to.” He was silent for a moment. Something in her expression seemed to upset him, because he suddenly touched her hand and said, “Hey. I’m still me. I’m not a masochist, I mean, I’m not _sick_. I don’t do this often, and it’s not as if I’m cutting into my arms in the deep of night. I just…need to _focus_ , sometimes.”

“When things go spinning out of control,” Lizzie repeated, and he nodded sharply.

“ _Yes_.”

“And you focus better when someone hurts you so bad you black out.”

He shook his head. “I told you, it’s not about the pain. It’s about…”

“Being punished.”

“No!”

“Then what? Because nothing you’ve said explains it in a way I can understand.”

Ressler looked frustrated, and helpless, and angry, and finally resigned. “I told you you wouldn’t get it. And you _don’t_. And that’s why I can’t talk to that shrink, because she wouldn’t get it either. I’m fine. As long as I can do this, once in a while, I’m _fine_. But nobody would believe it, because they wouldn’t _understand_. Hell, you don’t, and you’re one of the very few people I might’ve trusted with this.”

“You mean, even if I hadn’t walked in on you getting your ass handed to you.”

“Yes,” he spat. “If you’d taken me up on that sparring match a few weeks ago, you’d have known ages ago.”

“Yes,” Lizzie said flatly. Briefly, she wondered if that was the reason this whole thing upset her so much: the fact that he hadn’t come to her first. Or maybe it was the fact that she hadn’t _noticed_. Or the fact that he _had_ considered her first, and thought she would be ok with that. “I would have been the one to knock you out. I feel so flattered I was your first choice for a sadistic partner. That would have been such a healthy step of progress in our professional relationship.”

“Well, then you can be glad you never got your hands dirty and I found Dembe willing to fight me instead,” Ressler hissed, truly getting angry now. “I really don’t see the problem here. What is it to you I beat my personal demons through physical violence? Oh, apart from the fact that the way I do so makes you feel squeamish? Who the hell are you to judge me? Who is anyone to judge me, really? As long as I do my job, who cares how I solve my own problems?” He clenched his jaw, jutted out his chin. “You won’t have to be afraid I’ll screw up. I won’t. I have your back. I…”

“I know you have,” Liz interrupted him softly. “I’m not judging you.” He fell silent, and she sucked her lower lip between her teeth, chewed on it thoughtfully. After a while, she nodded to herself, took one of Ressler’s hands and gave it a brief squeeze. “Ok.”

“Ok?”

“Ok.”

“Ok, what?” he asked irritably.

“Ok, I don’t get it, but ok, I’ll leave it up to you to make sense of it. You’re right, it’s none of my business. If ‘this’ works for you, then…fine. Do what you have to do. Just…Do you remember the Stewmaker?”

He nodded tightly. “Yes. Of course.”

“He injected me with something. It was…it hurt. A lot. And it paralyzed me. I was so frightened. Even when Red came, and he killed him…I was so…”

Now it was Ressler’s turn to reach out and cover her hand with his own. “He’s dead.”

“When you saw me. Like that. Did you…did you like seeing me that way?”

“What…no! Of course not—what kind of question is that? What’s that got to do with this?”

Lizzie smiled a little. “Watching you get beaten up and ask for more…made me feel just like I did when I was in the Stewmaker’s hands.”

Ressler’s face drained of colour. “That’s…horribly unfair,” he whispered.

“But it’s the truth, and it’s the reason why I’m having such a hard time understanding,” Liz said. “I don’t want to see you hurt. God knows you’ve been through enough already. And now you’re telling me you need to get hurt, not just whipped, or cut, or I don’t know, but beat fucking _unconscious_ , just to function normally? And you expect me to understand that, and say, yes, that’s good, that’s ok, I can live with that without a second thought?” She raked a hand through her hair. “You need help. I can’t give it to you. But your way isn’t going to cut it, either, not in the long run. But.” She heaved another sigh. “Ok. I’ve said my piece. You’ve said yours. I’m going home.”

She got up, but halted when Ressler said, voice low and cold, “And where is home, at the moment? Is it even in the same building as it was last week?” She turned around, one hand trailing the back of her chair. Ressler’s face was a mask, but she couldn’t see what was behind it. “You’re so full of bullshit,” he said tonelessly, “with your glorification of the healing power of that shrink. How are _you_ doing, Lizzie, after seeing her? She gave you a clean bill of mental health, so you should be doing _great_ , shouldn’t you? Well, are you? You have completely uprooted your life, after first Reddington and then Tom destroyed it. Do you even know who you still are, after all the fake names and different hotel rooms? Have you ever taken the time to profile yourself?” Standing up from his chair as well, he moved into her private space and spoke, softly, into her nice short hair, “You’re doing exactly the same thing as I am doing. Losing yourself until there’s nothing left to remind you of who you are. Only in your case it doesn’t leave bruises, but empty rooms. In my case, at least I give Dembe the satisfaction of hand-to-hand combat.” He pulled back and smiled. “There. _Now_ I’ve said my piece. Have a good night, Keen.”

And walking past the counter to pay for the both of them, he left the cafeteria.


End file.
